Freedom's call is a global challenge

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The world falls well short of the ideal of universal
human rights but its people increasingly insist upon
it.

'We want peace and we want freedom." The speaker was one
Lebanese among hundreds of thousands who turned out in Beirut in
the Arab world's biggest demonstration of modern times. The rally
was held a month after the assassination of opposition leader Rafiq
Hariri and was twice as big as a rally by the Syrian-backed
Hezbollah last week. This week's rally drew from every main sect,
with estimated numbers varying from 300,000 to 800,000. Even the
lower figure is an astonishing show of popular will in a country
with a population of fewer than 4 million. The assassination was a
catalyst for ordinary Lebanese to protest against military and
political domination by their dictatorial neighbour, Syria, and its
proxies in Lebanon. Yet the rally exposed a problem: the lack of a
leader with the singular authority to take their demands further.
This underscores the crucial role of the world community, and of
United Nations mediation in particular. International help is
needed to ensure Syria relinquishes its grip on its neighbour.

The Lebanese still have many issues of their own to negotiate,
but their aspirations are common to all people. They were even
formally endorsed half a century ago: "The advent of a world in
which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and
freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest
aspirations of the common people," the preamble to the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights declares. Ever since, country after
country has trampled upon this ideal and the global response has
been wretched. When UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan accepted the
2001 Nobel peace prize, some observers regarded his speech's
advocacy of the primacy of human rights over state sovereignty as
radical. But that is what the 1948 declaration said.

What debate on the Iraq war exposed so uncomfortably is the lack
of global will or clear legal mechanisms to intervene in countries
whose people cry out for their rights and, all too often, for their
lives. As with all law, hopes for international law, and its
promise of peace and justice, will stand or fall on the universal
observance of rights. The pattern of events in Lebanon and other
areas of conflict is hopeful. It remains to be seen whether the
free world fully understands why no people, with no individual or
national exceptions, must be left to fight their own horribly
uneven battles for human rights.